A train ride
by flyin'rabbit
Summary: Under slightly different circumstances, perhaps Harry would've had different friends too. Maybe he would even have made it onto the Hogwarts Express at the start of his second year. AU, obviously.


**A/N**: Hello :) Thanks for reading! This story is rather AU, though not everything is different, as you will see. Hopefully you'll enjoy!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything you recognise

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"Hey, Harry!"

Harry Potter looked around, turning away from the window, and grinned as he saw who greeted him.

"Hey, Neville, Greg. How was your holiday?"

Neville Longbottom and Gregory Goyle were Harry's best friends, but he hadn't seen them at all in the past two months. Writing them had been difficult as well, for Harry's aunt and uncle didn't like the mere thought of owls flying around their house.

"We had fun," Neville said, grinning. Gregory simply nodded. Harry and Neville had learned very early on in the previous year that Gregory didn't talk a lot.

"Doing what?" Harry asked curiously. He himself hadn't had a very spectacular summer. Sure, he hadn't been on the receiving end of Dudley's bullying anymore, but nothing else that was out of the ordinary had happened. Dudley, having seen Harry's friends at the platform, had probably decided not to mess with Harry anymore for fear that his friends would come for a visit. Gregory was, after all, just as big as Dudley himself, and he looked even more intimidating.

"He had fun," Gregory said in reply.

The corners of Neville's mouth twitched upwards. "I had fun indeed. For almost twelve years, gran was breathing down my neck the entire time. She always told me what to do. It was quite funny to see someone else suffer that fate for once."

"Did she succeed?" Harry asked, smiling as well. He now understood what his friends were talking about.

"She thinks so," Neville replied. "And if she didn't succeed, there's always next year."

Gregory muttered something. "He can't wait," Harry told Neville, and they laughed. As Gregory muttered something else, Harry asked, "Was it that bad?"

Gregory pulled a face. "Have you ever met his gran?" Harry shook his head. "Then you have no idea what it was like."

"Oh, she's not that bad," Neville protested half-heartedly. "Alright, she's strict. And sometimes, she's pretty scary. But she's not a horrible woman."

Shaking his head, Gregory grunted something, and Harry laughed. "Greg, you know you have to speak more clearly if you want us to understand what you're saying, right?"

Gregory rolled his eyes. "I know."

The compartment door opened and the trio's least favourite person in the world stuck his head inside the compartment. He sneered immediately. "Potter and Longbottom. What, is this some gathering for the biggest losers in the entire school?"

Now Harry rolled his eyes. "Get lost, Malfoy. Don't you have other things to do? Hex some first years or suck up to some Prefects?"

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "At least I'm not part of the biggest group of losers this school has ever known."

Harry looked at his two companions. Gregory was staring into space, trying to ignore Malfoy as well as he could, and Neville was fumbling with his thumbs. Just the fact that they didn't stand up to Malfoy didn't make them losers.

"I think you are, actually," he told Malfoy.

"What do you mean by that?" Malfoy hissed, and Harry smirked a little.

"At least I'm not a Slytherin," he said, getting up from his seat. He walked towards the compartment door and shut it. Fortunately, Malfoy didn't bother coming in again.

Harry knew well enough that a lot of people never would've thought that the three of them would become best friends. In reality, though, they were more similar than they appeared at first glance.

All three of them were rather quiet, most of the time, due to how they had been brought up. Harry's aunt and uncle always liked to pretend he wasn't there at all, so he had to stay quiet. Besides, he had never really had anyone to talk to. Neville's gran, though not exactly mean like the Dursleys, had always told Neville what to do and how to behave – there was no room for him to talk back, to stand up against her. Harry hadn't quite figured out Gregory's upbringing yet. He had probably been told to stay quiet as well, most of the time. He must've been ordered around by his parents, by Malfoy, and maybe by others as well.

In a way, the three of them were all orphans too. Harry's parents, of course, were dead. They had found out last year, when questioning Neville about the subject, that his parents had been tortured so badly that they were permanently at the wizarding hospital and would never fully recover. Gregory had become rather nervous when they had talked about that – after all, Neville's parents' torturers had been Death Eaters. Followers of Voldemort's. A group of people Gregory's parents had been involved with as well.

It wasn't as if Gregory's parents still talked to him, though. After he had miraculously been Sorted into Gryffindor last year, they had sent him a Howler. A short time later, he received an official letter from the Ministry, telling him that his parents had disowned him.

All his old Slytherin friends had abandoned Gregory as well. Yet they didn't pester him – they ignored him. Harry sometimes thought he could see them itching to make a slighting remark, but they never went through with it. That was precisely the reason why Malfoy had ignored Gregory earlier. He couldn't not have seen Gregory; that was an almost impossible feat.

"So what did you do this summer?" Harry asked his friends once more.

"We did some nice stuff," Neville replied. "We read some nice books, walked around the neighbourhood for a bit."

"Those books and walks were still meant to teach me stuff," Gregory said. It seemed that he was finally coming out of his shell again. "They were books about Muggles, walks around Muggle neighbourhoods…"

"Yes, that's true," Neville admitted.

"What else did she make you do?" Harry asked Gregory. Neville was the only one who regularly wrote home out of their group, and when he told his gran about his friendship with Harry and Gregory, she had had rather mixed feelings about that. After a while, she had decided that Gregory should stay at theirs for the summer (she had offered the same thing to Harry at first, but when Neville wrote back with an affirmative reply, she had suddenly changed her mind. The reason for that was still unclear to the boys). She was convinced that she could teach him some new morals. He had, after all, been brought up amongst Slytherins with lots of prejudices. Those prejudices didn't exactly match the mainstream Gryffindor morals and views, so he had to be re-educated, according to Neville's gran.

"I learned about the war," Gregory replied, frowning. He must've already known a lot about the war, but from a different point of view. "And about Muggles. That prejudices based on blood purity are bad."

"She moulded you into a Gryffindor," Harry concluded, grinning. No matter how much they had bonded last year, sometimes Gregory's opinions on certain things were a little odd, or even disturbing to his friends.

"We'll see," Neville said as Gregory only shrugged.

After this, Neville recounted some more holiday tales to Harry, sometimes aided by Gregory. When Harry, albeit hesitantly, told them about his own holiday (consisting mostly of doing chores and being locked up in his room), Neville suddenly yelped.

"Have you seen Trevor?" he asked his friends anxiously. "I'm sure I had him when we got on the train!"

"No, haven't seen him," Harry replied, and Gregory shook his head. Neville really started to panic now. Before he could go completely crazy, however, the compartment door opened once again.

"Hey, Neville, there you are." Neville whipped around, and so did his friends.

"Hi, Hermione," he greeted her. Harry and Gregory smiled at her. Hermione Granger, the smartest student in their year, was a friend of theirs too. They weren't as close to her as they were to one another, but they all got along rather well. The same went for all the other Gryffindors in their year.

"I found your toad," she said, failing to keep an amused smile off of her face.

"Trevor!" Neville exclaimed. "I was just looking for him, thanks, Hermione!"

"That's alright, Neville. Oh, I should head back to my compartment. Mandy's probably wondering what's taking me so long. We're at the other end of the train, you know." Mandy Brocklehurst, a Ravenclaw in their year, was Hermione's closest friend. Harry suspected that they had bonded during their numerous evenings spent in the library, doing homework and reading in general.

"Who wants to play some Exploding Snap?" Neville asked as soon as Hermione was gone. Exploding Snap was Neville's forte. Neither he nor Harry were very good chess players – Gregory, however, was. His friends would never have guessed that, but when Ron Weasley, a dorm mate of theirs and one of the best chess players in school, had challenged Gregory last year, it had taken him quite some time before he could actually beat him. Harry, of course, was on the Quidditch team.

As they played Exploding Snap, they chatted about the upcoming school year. The previous year had been very exciting, and the boys wondered if this year would be even better.

"The start of term feast will be wicked, I'm sure!" Harry said, and Gregory grinned, probably at the thought of all the food provided there. "And it'll be fun to see the first years get Sorted. We have nothing to worry about this year!"

Neville grinned as well at this prospect. "I can hardly wait to get there."

For the third time, their compartment door opened. This time, it was the witch with the food trolley. Before they knew it, all their pockets were a lot lighter, and their compartment was a lot fuller. The empty seats next to Harry were almost completely covered in all sorts of sweets. For a moment, the three of them just sat there, savouring the moment (and the sweets, of course).

Until, all of a sudden, the cards started blowing up. Luckily, there wasn't any real damage. Gregory, responsible for the slight movement of the compartment table, slowly bent down to the floor to pick up the fallen cards.

Many Gryffindors had been rather apprehensive when Gregory had been Sorted in their House last year. Harry, having already helped Neville find his toad on the train, had been the first one to talk to Gregory. Since he didn't know what kind of family he was from, he had been surprised at the reactions of the other students. Rumours had followed them (and Neville) around during the first month of school, but the amount of gossip decreased every week. By now, Gregory was accepted just like every other Gryffindor – almost. Due to his sometimes strange ideas, some people still had their doubts. Harry was sure that even those people would accept him now.

He himself had immediately seen the similarities between himself and Gregory, and Neville of course. For some reason, they had bonded, and now each of them was hardly ever seen without the other two.

"How did the school shopping go?" Harry looked up in surprise as Gregory asked him this. It wasn't like him to ask a question – to (re-)start a conversation.

"It was alright," he replied, shrugging. "My aunt and uncle dropped me off in London, spoiled my cousin the entire day, and picked me up again. I didn't need a lot, so I spend most of the day in the Leaky Cauldron and at Florean Fortescue's."

"We were done pretty quickly as well," Neville informed him as Gregory just nodded at Harry's tale. "Gran didn't want to stay for an 'unnecessarily long time'." Harry grinned. He assumed that Neville and Gregory must've been happy to get out of the house for a change. Just like him.

Later that day, after getting off the train, riding a carriage to Hogwarts, watching the Sorting and listening to Dumbledore's speech, they were all too ready to tuck in – apart from the sweets, they hadn't had a lot of food today. Catching his friends' eyes, Harry grinned.

"It's great to be back, isn't it?" Neville asked. Gregory, as was usual, just nodded.

"It is indeed," Harry replied, just as the food appeared on the plates. It was _very_ good to be back.

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**A/N**: What do you think? :) Liked it, hated it? Anyway, whatever your thoughts, let me know, please review!


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